Botany and Ormiston Times : Howick and Botany Times Wednesday November 12 2014

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Howick and Botany Times, Wednesday, November 12, 2014 — 3
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By Marianne Kelly
HUNTER, food gatherer and celeb-
rity cook Annabel Langbein is excited
that her message of empowering
people about the way they cook, eat
and live is about to go into the huge
United States market.
She’s just launched her 21st book,
The Free Range Cook – Through the
Seasons, which is accompanied by a
television series of the same name on
TV One.
It will also air on the US TV net-
work PBS (Public Broadcasting Serv-
ice) next year.
“I have no idea what that will bring,
but know it’s a huge opportunity and
one I never imagined would come
along,” she told the Times after a
recent book-signing session at Paper
Plus, Howick.
She told her Howick fans: “I’m just
warming up. It’s lovely you are all
cooking with me.”
PBS, says Ms Langbein, accepts to
broadcast only about four food shows
a year from outside the US, “out of
literally thousands”.
“I love turning the page, seeing all
these new and exciting opportunities
and then working out the jigsaw puz-
zle to make it happen.
“With all the exciting things hap-
pening in new media and social
media, we have a chance to get out
and explore new horizons that even
10 years ago didn’t exist.”
It’s a far cry from the 16-year-old
who left home and headed for the
wilderness, first living the hippy
dream growing vegetables, cooking
over a fire and living off the land.
Within a couple of years she had
become a seasoned hunter and
fisher, and was making her living as
a trapper, fishing professionally for
crayfish and eels, and jumping out of
helicopters to recover live deer.
However, rather than being about
self-sufficiency or hunter-gathering,
she says her latest book is about giving
people the means to feel empowered
about the way they feel connected,
cook and eat and live.
“My early experiences of living off
the land were incredibly formative
and have helped shape my ideas of
resourcefulness and my appreciation
of the way food connects us to nature
and the environment around us.
“The idea of connectivity is cen-
tral to my ethos and in this new book
and the accompanying TV series, my
focus has been around the seasonal
harvests from the garden as the basis
for the way I approach food and
cook.”
In the book, Ms Langbein talks
about “cooking the landscape”, part
of her free-range philosophy.
“It means you aren’t locked into
an idea of recipes, rather the idea of
freshness.
“Choose whatever is in season, in
the market or garden, whether it is
cauliflower or asparagus, and you’ll
get to eat and enjoy the freshest and
best quality.
“That way you can use whatever
flavours or ethnic food styles that
take your fancy to segue those same
ingredients in different directions.
“I’ve done demos around this idea
recently,” she says. “I arrive at a
farmers market with no idea of what
I’m going to cook.
“I wander around choosing what-
ever looks freshest and most entic-
ing, and show how to pull it together
into an impromptu meal using just a
small box of pantry ingredients, such
as oils and spices.
“At the markets in Tasmania last
month, I found the most amazing
cauliflowers, so I made a raw cauli-
flower couscous with lemon, herbs
and walnuts, and a simple cauliflower
and potato curry.
“There’s a real freedom around
cooking like this – it opens up your
creativity.”
Ms Langbein says home cooking
is about nourishment and care and,
asked whether Kiwis are getting bet-
ter at this with better attitudes, she
says: “We had it, then we lost it and
now we are getting it back again.
“A lot has to do with the pressure
families and households are under.
People just don’t think they have time
to cook and so end up eating a lot of
industrialised and processed food.
“But when you show them how
easy and quick it is to make a deli-
cious meal, how much money they
can save and how much actual nour-
ishment they can gain, they go, ‘hey,
yes I can do that’.”
Ms Langbein’s TV show contains
more gardening content than the two
previous series. It combines her har-
vests with a global pantry of flavours
and her trademark Fridge Fixings
to create easy dishes that are big on
flavour while, with a few indulgent
exceptions, light on fat and sugar.
“I love to garden,” she says, “espe-
cially growing vegetables and fruit –
always have. I studied horticulture at
Lincoln [University] way back when.
“Growing some of your own food,
even if it’s a pot of herbs, helps deliver
a sense of connectivity.
“When you connect with nature
you feel very calm and centred, prob-
ably because it’s something deeply
rooted in our psyches.
“In my own life, growing a garden
has and continues to be the best way
I know to feel grounded and con-
nected and I think more people are
tuning into this.”
Annabel Langbein
■■
The Free Range
Cook: Through the Seasons screens at
7pm on Saturdays on TV One, while
the book is available from Paper Plus
at the special price of $49.99. Pur-
chasers receive a free Seasons bis-
cuit tin worth $19.99. More recipes
can be found online at the site www.
annabel-langbein.com.
WIN A BOOK
The Times has a copy of Annabel
Langbein’s book, The Free Range
Cook – Through the Seasons, to give
away.
Write your name and daytime con-
tact details on the back of an envelope
and send it to: Through the Seasons
Competition, Times Newspapers, PO
Box 259-243, Botany, Auckland 2163;
or enter online at www.times.co.nz.
Entries close on November 19.
Annabel’s free-range philosophy
Above, Howick’s Paper Plus staff enjoyed meeting high-profile cook Annabel Langbein, who visited the store to sign her new book for customers; below,
enthusiastic fans of all ages lined up to meet her and have their copies autographed; the Times has a book, cover below right, to give away.
Times photos Wayne Martin